Pickup Lines For Ninjas
by rallamajoop
Summary: The process of getting Yuffie on your party actually requires a couple more steps than your typical walkthrough would have you believe.


**Notes: **Large chunks of this are sponged directly off the in-game dialogue, the rest is all the product of my imagination. Yes, that's _Final Fantasy VII_ - not AC, not BC, DoC, CC, LO or even KH - just good old original FFVII in all its dawn-of-the-PS graphical glory. For best results, we recommend imagining all the characters are about as detailed as lego pieces with skittle arms while reading.

Damn, but it's nice writing for the good old FFVII Cloud after seeing so much of all these doom-and-gloom versions they've come up with since.

* * *

By the fourth ambush, no-one was remotely surprised anymore, not to mention so thoroughly sick of it all that they'd begun to treat the whole affair more like a chore of the taking-out-the-garbage variety than a series of serious battles. Of course, their mystery attacker took their reluctance to fight rather differently. 

"Thinkin' of running away? Stay and fight! FIGHT, I said! C'mon… What's the matter? You're pretty scared of me, huh!?" The girl waved her arms around in a manner that wouldn't have been so threatening if she hadn't been wearing a costume that made you worry that some part was about to fly off and hit you in the face any minute. While technically it would be hard to argue that she was dressed like a ninja, it was the kind of ninja that had been scrounged off another ninja's clothesline. Possibly several other ninja's clotheslines.

"…petrified." Cloud assured her, in a voice which must have broken in to whole new areas in the field of the deadpan. Aeris put her head in her hands.

From the mystery ninja's obvious satisfaction, however, she must have believed he'd meant nothing less. "Hmm, just as I thought. What do you expect with my skills? Good luck to you guys too. If you feel up to it, we can go another around. Later!" she declared, walked a few paces, then turned around and stopped. "I'm really gonna leave! REALLY!"

To the collective surprise of all present, Cloud called out, "Wait a second!"

"What is it, you still have somethin' for me?" The girl craned to see Cloud's expression. Even months later, the only going theory on how she could have misread what she saw there as enthusiasm required a pretty impressive level of self-delusion on her part.

"…Hmmm. So is that it? I know you want my help because I'm so good! You want me to go with you?" Credit where it was due, she did a decent job of making this sound as though she'd only just thought of it that very moment, though it would have been more effective had she not gotten the whole thought out in one breath.

To everyone else's continuing surprise, Cloud's response was, "That's right," without even any apparent sarcasm.

"Heh heh…thought so." If the ego on this thief could have been converted to a power source, mako energy would have become very swiftly obsolete. "You put me in a spot. Hmm, what should I do? But if you want me that bad, I can't refuse… All right! I'll go with you!"

"Cloud?" said Tifa, very deliberately, before any other horrifying decisions could be made. "Could I have a word?" Behind her, Barret was making an urgent jerking motion with one arm to signal the same. Given Barret's usual mode of communication from a distance, this had to be him trying to be particularly subtle, which was a bit sad, since 'subtle' is a descriptor no signal made by a six foot man with a gun on his arm is ever going to deserve.

Cloud nodded in their direction. "Of course. Can you give us a minute?" he said, turning towards the rest of the group, now consisting of Aeris, Red XIII and their new friend.

Leaders like Cloud do not get forcefully dragged away into the forest by their companions for a quiet chat, however, later on, no-one would be able to quite shake the impression that he had been.

* * *

Once they'd put a few trees between themselves and the rest of the party, the meeting began. 

"Cloud, are you sure about this?" said Tifa, who, despite wanting to trust him, was very much short of sure herself.

"Yeah, I know we made you leader and all, but what the hell are you thinking?" Barret agreed.

Cloud put on one of his leader faces, of the placating variety. "She wants to join; I think our best solution is to let her. On our side, she could be useful."

Tifa was quite glad that Barret was the one who said, "You out of your punky-ass mind?" because it was much what she'd been thinking as well, but if she'd had to take up the conversation at that point, habit would have forced her to be a lot more tactful about it than she was than she was starting to feel the situation called for.

Cloud shook his head, undeterred. "No, this could work for us. If she's been after us this long she isn't going to give up, and we aren't in a position where we have a lot of other options. Ordinarily, we'd turn someone like her over to the authorities, but right now, the authorities…"

"Are those Shinra bastards," Barret finished for him, voice nearing a growl.

"Exactly," Cloud agreed. "And right now, we couldn't afford that sort of contact even if we were happy with the idea of handing someone over to them. Besides, she must have been surviving out in the woods for some time, and we haven't heard her sneaking up on us once – she's obviously got some decent skills. Remember who we're after. If we really are going to take on Sephiroth, we'll need all the help we can get."

"So you think that if we can't get rid of her, it's better have her where we can see her?" Tifa suggested, starting to catch on.

"Hrnn." Barret rumbled, still somewhere short of convinced. "I get where ya comin' from, but how do we know she's not gonna nick off with the money in the middle of the night?" He and Tifa both looked at Cloud expectantly.

The thing about Cloud was that he was Tifa's childhood friend and a natural leader and he fought like, well, a professional SOLDIER (not to put too fine a point on it), but there were still all these scattered moments where you had to wonder whether he was really all there. And maybe that was normal, maybe that was just him thinking two steps ahead of everyone else like a leader had to, but a lot of the time, one couldn't so much follow his logic as grab hold of an edge as it blundered past and hope when you let go again you'd be where you were expecting to go. They all respected Cloud – they'd had to learn to do so (grudgingly or otherwise) in a very short amount of time, or they'd never have gotten this far, but this was turning into one of those moments.

"Don't worry," said Cloud, looking at Tifa. "I've got that figured out too. In fact, you might be able to help me with that…"

* * *

Tifa came back to the clearing a little bit ahead of the others. She tapped their newest recruit on the shoulder. "Can I talk to you for a minute?" 

The badly dressed ninja spun around and grinned at her. "Wanna welcome me to the team, huh? Thanks a lot, very grateful and all that stuff, but there's no need to bother, so are we going now?"

"There's something else," said Tifa, as evenly as she could manage. "You know we want you to join, but there are a few things you should know first which Cloud hasn't explained."

"Yeah?"

"We know you can handle yourself well in a fight," Tifa began, "but where we're going, we'll be seeing a lot of monsters…"

"Monsters? Hah! You just lemme at 'em!" the ninja declared, with another one of those exciting arm waving motions.

Aeris, to her credit, was close enough by and caught on fast enough to join in here. "But not just like the ones we see around here. Where we're going, there's going to be far worse to come."

"That's why we need to be sure you aren't going to chicken out and run away as soon as things get difficult," Tifa finished.

"Chicken out? Maybe _you_ guys are going to, but me? You leave all the monsters to me. I'll take them apart!" The other girls had to resist the urge to step back a pace here, just in case all that flailing was about to turn into an impromptu demonstration of just exactly how she'd deal with those monsters, regardless of the little issue of there not being any monsters present.

"There's worse than monsters too," Tifa went on, hurriedly. "You see, Shinra doesn't exactly like us…"

"Shinra?" The mystery ninja's face lit up, dropped and hardened all in one motion. "I'll take on Shinra any day. Just point me in the right direction! Just say the word! Those Shinra worms won't know what hit them!"

Tifa was aware she'd been interrupted a moment ago, but everything else she'd been about to relay seemed a little irrelevant after that reaction. Hatred of Shinra could pretty well unite the world. "I suppose that takes care of everything then."

"So, where we're going," the girl spoke up, in a voice that had the kind of subtlety that even Barret would have sneered at, "not that this is a big thing or important or anything, but there's going to be treasure, right?"

Aeris and Tifa looked at each other. "That sounds very likely to me," said Aeris. "Don't you think, Tifa?"

"Treasure. Of course. There's bound to be all kinds of treasure at the end of this." Tifa tried very hard not to think about what kind of intellect it would take to be taken in by this kind of story.

"Okay, whatever, not like I care, 'cause of course it's you guys who talked me into coming along in the first place, but we'll be sharing it all out at the end, right?"

Well, anything that encouraged her to stick around without making too much trouble. "I'm sure that's exactly what we'll be doing." Tifa glanced over the newcomer's shoulder. "Right, Cloud?"

There was something quite satisfying in watching the ninja girl jump guiltily and spin around so fast that it was pretty evident she couldn't have had any idea there had been anyone walking up behind her.

"Everything settled?" said Cloud calmly.

"I think we're all done here." Aeris smiled.

"Couldn't be settled-er!"

Cloud nodded in a satisfied fashion. "Let's hurry on. If we get moving, we can still make it to Junon by nightfall."

Fulfilling those leadership duties once again, Cloud lead the way. Barret followed, now grumbling only quietly to himself. Red XIII flicked his tail in something roughly approximating the manner of a cat which could not quite decide whether it wanted attention or just an excuse to sink its claws into someone.

"That was certainly not the way I expected to see the situation resolved" he said, with reasonable dignity considering that the girl had called him a talking fuzzball while Cloud had been away.

As Red XIII ambled off after the other two, Tifa glanced over her shoulder to where the ninja was facing away from them and appeared to be talking to herself with some enthusiasm. Tifa decided she really didn't want to hear what was being said.

Someone tapped her on the shoulder.

"She'll be along," Aeris assured her, with that smile again. "You trust Cloud, don't you?"

They all trusted Cloud. They were trusting him a hell of a long way. It was why they were all still there. It was the loud-mouthed, mismatched ninja-thief who'd just insinuated herself into their party that Tifa was still making up her mind about.

"Are you really sure this is going to be alright?" she had to ask.

Aeris maintained the smile for another two seconds before it fell right off her face. "Oh, earth beneath me, I hope so."

"Hey! Wait up! I haven't even told you my name yet!" came a yell from behind.

It was going to be a long journey.


End file.
